According to a new report from Germany-based secondary market research firm yStats.com, “Europe Online Payment Methods: First Half 2017”, the payment preferences of online shoppers in Europe differ by country. The report provides insights into online and mobile payment developments in 16 markets across the region, also revealing the overarching importance of factors such as security and convenience in consumers’ choice in how to pay.
Card payments account for the highest share of E-Commerce spending in Europe, as of 2017. The share of E-Wallets such as PayPal increased significantly over the past several years, but remained second, according to research findings included in this report by yStats.com. Nevertheless, there is significant room for variance in terms of how online shoppers in different countries prefer to pay. While bank card is the most popular online payment method in countries such as the UK, Belgium and France, cards stand in close rivalry with PayPal in Italy and rank far behind payment by invoice in Germany and Switzerland. In several Eastern European nations, including Romania and Hungary, cash on delivery is still the top choice, although online card payments are on the rise.
On average across the region, convenience, security and speed are the top 3 criteria for choosing a payment method, according to a recent survey cited in the yStats.com report. Even in a country with an advanced online payment market, such as the UK, customers believe that using cards in-store is more secure than online. On the merchant side, more than 50% of European multichannel retailers find it challenging to manage fraud while avoiding an impact on customers. Security and data protection is also the top criteria determining the shoppers’ decision to use mobile payments, while convenience is seen as a major benefit of this payment method. For instance, a single digit percentage of Internet users in Russia use solutions such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay to pay for purchases in online shops, while in Denmark already a double-digit share of consumers used their smartphones to pay for a product at a physical store.
The yStats.com report also highlights recent regulatory changes in the EU that are expected to have a significant impact on the European payments market. For example, the new instant payment settlement infrastructure, to start operations in the Eurozone from November 2018, could spur the share of instant payments to a double-digit percentage of E-Commerce payment value within the next 10 years.
